The Voyage of Charon's Chariot
by Asine
Summary: This is the tale of the Airship Charon's Chariot, and all of her crew.


It wasn't very long ago when a wind of terrible speeds careened through the small mountain town of Terashi, ravaging the crops and demolishing all the houses. Yet very few people in the town suffered more than a few scrapes, for in the middle of each home, the townspeople had built a tunnel that led underground, to a vast undercity. The Undercity was encased in brass and tempered glass; a safe underground replica of the city in case of any catastrophic problems, like the torrent above them. Unfortunately, this was to become their home for the next twenty years. As the violent winds caused a uprooting of trees, this furthered a collapse in the tunnels exiting to the surface. Dahlia became an orphan due to this collapse, and her mother's best friend Annelle Dahlia in to raise as her own. An only child of age 5, she educated herself by her own feverish passion to learn, pouring through tomes of knowledge in their underground library. She was continuously studying maps of the known world, learning about the oceans and the stars, endlessly listening to the stories of the elders and the parents of the town, while avoiding the children's rough games. She took up gardening with Annelle, and in an unbeknownst talent, was able to turn their small plot into a flourishing rainbow of edible fruits and vegetables by age 8. Her gift was so widely requested that some of the townsfolk began to wonder about ever going back to the surface at all. With a decent food supply, it seemed unnecessary. Dahlia, however, began to long for the sun again, not just the lights of kerosene and coal.

Occasionally stealing out into the regulated night, Dahlia took a lantern and ventured into the tunnel paths that the people had given up on. She began to slowly carve out an entrance back to the surface, tirelessly working for hours until the first lamplights flickered on. Dahlia did this for many years, using a small pickaxe and digging out a small tunnel over the gilded Undercity. One night, she broke through to the surface and managed to squeeze herself through the hole and into the night air.  
>As she looked upon the surface of her former home, a gentle breeze carried sand across the whole terrain. The mountain that had been their home had been reduced to granules in less than two decades due to the brute force of the howling gust. Yet little sprouts of green plants of their former crops were growing, thriving in the moonlight.<p>

Now 25, Dahlia was viewing a coastline of a crystalline and still ocean, millions of stars alit in the ebon sky. A ribbon of the cosmos clustered and wove their way across the horizon, a crescent smile of a moon glowing above. Her blue eyes wide in amazement and awe, Dahlia swore to never go back beneath the surface again. If anything, she was going to go higher and farther than anyone in her village had ever done before. Stepping out into the night, she scavenged for leaves and bark to weave together. By the break of dawn, she had built a small watercraft on which to leave her village. As she set out, she could hear voices of the villagers as sunlight peeked in to the dark underground tomb. The current that swept her out to the sea soon carried her back to a different part of the world. Lush, green, and full of life, Dahlia found herself in a very interesting marshland. She drifted for two days, feeding off new foods that she had never seen before.

Lost due to an overcast sky, she finally collided with a large sycamore. Standing up, she decided she would try to find her way by foot from here. However, the swamp and its denizens had other ideas. She was about to step off the raft when a strange shadow caught her eyes.  
>"Hello?" She called out, and a gruff voice responded. "Mon Cherie, you migh' just wanna stay in that raft ifin' you know what's good for ya." Stunned at his accent and his manner, she felt very indignant, if not a bit scared. "And who says you know what's good for me?" Dahlia fired back, and she could have sworn she felt him smile. "Well, dahlin', if you'd want it your way…" The glint of brass could be seen in the shadows of the trees as he raised a knife, poised to throw like it was aimed right for her. "Mister, please, I'm sorry, I didn't mean…" His wrist flicked and the knife cut the air with a whistle, slicing by her ear and making her hair flutter from the wind.<p>

Dahlia opened one eye tentatively, and realized she was alright. Sitting in the raft next to her, a gargantuan water python was missing a good chunk of himself, the knife pinning it to the raft floor. "Dat might be why it'd be a good idea to not slide you dainty foot dea into th' murky deep. Tings kinda like nibbling at th' toes." He says, a smile glinting out from the shadows. "I grew up in a place a bit like dis, 'oveva, ain't seen milky skin likes a'yours in de bayou or any otha mashland. Whea you from. mon Cherie?" His gentlemanly manners made her blush slightly, but she managed to form a coherent sentence together.

"My name is Dahlia Gunn, and I'm from a mining town called Terashi." Thinking back on all of the friends that she had left behind, particularly Annelle, it made her start to tear up. Never had she been this far from anything she knew. The man looked at her and swung down onto a lower branch so the light caught him better. He looked at her and then sniffed the air, scanning the horizon. Turning back, he cocked his head and said extending his hand "My name is Auric Carver, Captain of Charon's Chariot." He says kissing her hand softly after taking it in his. "Quite a pleasure to find a beautiful flower such as yourself in the mashlands. H'oweva, you a bit of a ways from home Ms. Gunn, 'ow ya makit down ta da mashlands?" he asks quizzically, knowing roughly that the mountains lie at least 100 miles northwestwards.

Having never been referred to as anything close to a flower, Dahlia blushed. The sad look on her face returned as she gazed out across the horizon. "The town I grew up in was decimated by a sandstorm. We moved underground, and all we've had is lamplight for a false sun. I dug my way back out, built a raft, and just…went." Her eyes became unfocused, and her body began to quiver. "They said I never could…all of my dreams were just selfish, that the nightmares I had…" Her eyes flashed a violent shade of green, and for a moment she looked inhuman. "NOTHING MORE THAN FILTHY LIARS! ALL OF THEM!" She suddenly screamed to the swamp, rearing back and chunked her pickaxe as hard as she could. It spun through the air, past Auric, and landed with a "plunk" into the swamp. Horror crossed her features, and she lowered her head shamefully. "I'm sorry, Captain Carver, I'm not sure what came over me. It's just…I've never been very good at controlling my emotions."

The captain sighed and looked back into the swamp; you could tell a thought crossed his mind. "Mademoiselle Gunn, Na' in de bayou we have us a sayin'. Don skin da fish befor it in da boat. Its true tat tings seem kinda bad" he says, slipping off his perch and gingerly into the boat, his fierce peridot eyes looking at her watery steel blues. "But once ya git dat fish in ya boat, dea is more ten one way ta skin it in tat boat." He says with a smile. Seeing a confused Dahlia, he stops and taps his chin. "Ya have traveled tis far withou' ya fallin ta de elements. So I have a proposition for ya" he says sitting down in the boat. Wiping the stray tears that had started to form, Dahlia sniffled once and sat down next to the Captain. "I'm listening, Sir." He wrapped a heavy arm around her, hugging her. "Now Cher, ain't no sense in waterin' tem cheeks. Hea." He said, pulling from his jacket a handkerchief make of a forest green silken cloth. He handed it to her and smiled. "By yerself ya have made it ta tis here swamp. My ship is in ta middle of this here bayou. Get to the ship, and you will have a job as my navigata." He says, patting your arm as he looks down at you, a smile staying on his goateed face. Dabbing her eyes with the green silk, she nodded, and the corners of her lips pulled into a smile. "I also cook, you know." She grinned and sat up straight. "If I can find it, I can be your Navigator?" Thinking the maps over in her head, all the years that she studied the star charts for her love of the sky, and now she might get a chance to use her skills? Dahlia was almost giddy inside. Keeping her composure, she asked, "Did you want me to navigate there, now, with you in the boat? Or did you want to meet me there?" With a sly wink, she hugged him back once and stood up, grabbing her oar.

He murred and returned the hug then stood. "I 'ave sometin' I be needin' ta take care of. 'Oweva, ya make it down true de bayou, I will see you dea" he said, leaning down to retrieve the throwing blade, wiping it off on his legging as he muttered something staring at the snake. Afterwards he turned and gripped onto a branch, flipping up onto it. Pushing off of the branch the strange man disappeared again into the swamp.

Shaking her head at the Captain, Dahlia hauled the rest of the snake into the boat and then pushed off into the breaking dawn with her oar. With the sun on the horizon, her navigation skills started running on autopilot. Even as she canvassed the depths of the swamp, she was still able to maneuver with grace and ease. It wasn't long before she was directly in the middle of the swamp, and off to her left she caught the glimpse of an oddly large house. "No…It couldn't be…"

Sure enough- there, right in the middle of the bayou, sat a Victorian style house, easily three stories tall, not to mention the whirly-gig on the top. Her food dwindling dangerously low, she managed to swing her tiny, crippled raft to the man sitting on the front porch, whittling away a piece of wood. Calling out to him, she soon realized it was Captain Carver, in his airship he called Charon's Chariot. The whole concept fascinated Dahlia, and she begged him to take her with his crew on his journeys. The Captain agreed, and in exchange for living on the ship, she promised to cook for all of them, and proved her talent in an applesauce. Granted safe passage, she was later discovered as a boon of information, and with her innate ability to navigate with the stars as well as determining where the terrain would favor them, she soon became labeled the navigator. She was the best map-reader, and was able to read the weather patterns just on the shifting winds.


End file.
